Orbiting Solar Recharge Drone
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What is the purpose for building such a thing?

Orbiting Solar Recharge drone is used mostly as a d space recharge facility. It should be public or faction specific to use, if agreed so every faction should be able to recharge their batteries at the orbiting solar recharge drones. The main issue is obviously the abuse of the drones and stealing them, as pirate factions would camp the territories around the orbiting drones looking for some easy pray the drones should be protected from pirate factions by some neutral police force.

All around the drones could provide necessary power for ships running low on fuel or energy, small battery powered craft travelling over long distances and such. They can even be modified to provide travelers with ratios, as uranium, and other things (possibly even food and water if they were to be added to game at some point).

The drones are orbiting for many reasons, the main one being that the drone would be able to cover large distances on its eliptical trip, thus covering larger amount of ships. Another reason to have them orbit is to reduce the chance of boarding and attacks significantly as moving target is harder to both hit and board.

About the drone

The drone itself features several concepts including self adjusting solar panels, orbiting, connectors, gattling turret protecting from meteor attacks, and many more. The advanced orbiting drone issues even more features as automatic landing beam and more.

Automatic adjusting solar arrays

The arrays use separate gyros and are mounted on rotors so the arrays stay at 100% solar power at all times. This is achieved by adjusting the arrays to the direct sun light and than turning off the rotors holding them in place, allowing the gyros mounted on solar wings to keep them at the same angle towards the sun at all times.

solar recharging station

Orbiting

It is achieved by usage of 1 thruster and 1 overrided gyroscope. The thruster and gyro ratio should be played with. For example I have mine forward thruster set to 2kN and Gyro’s pitch to 0.5 RPM. That means that the drone will accelerate forward with the force of 2kN and at the same time rotate around itself 0.5 times a minute, or in other words it will make a full loop every 2 minutes.

Orbiting using gyro and thruster override is still very new so it should be played with and experimented to get the desired results.
Also take care not to have your drone crash into anything, as it takes some time for the drone to reach its maximum orbit and speed. The starting orbit won’t be the one you will end up with.

Connectors

The connectors are placed on the back of the solar relay drone so that you can connect to it without crashing. To connect you just need to follow it, or use the experimental connecting beam in the advanced version of the drone.

By connecting to connectors you can deposit/withdraw any materials or ratios needed as well as charge your batteries through the recharging’s station batteries.

solar recharge station back view

Advanced version

I’m currently still working on the advanced autopilot feature that is gonna pull the ship towards the orbiting recharge drone and have it line up to the connectors perfectly to simplify the connecting process.

Experimental remote control

I’m currently also working on the experimental remote control technique which will I hope be shown in one of my next posts.

Also Valyria the drone carrier ship is also being retrofitted with the newest updates stuff so expect future updates from her as well!